


Send Me An Angel

by dreamofhorses



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Clubbing, Consensual Somnophilia, Don't Try This At Home, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Murder, New York City, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partying, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:05:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamofhorses/pseuds/dreamofhorses
Summary: Next week,Armie tells himself.I’ll come back one time, just one, to see if the kid is here again. It’s not crazy to come looking for someone that special, once, to prove it wasn’t a dream.An AU based around the NYC Club Kids of the early 1990s. Timmy is a young charismatic party boy who draws Wall Street hotshot Armie into his orbit. This draws fairly specifically from the Michael Alig murder of Angel Melendez so there will be allusions to pretty dark things happening though they're not going to be the focal point of the fic, and neither of our main characters dies.Tags and rating to be updated as the fic is completed.





	1. Dirty Numb Angel Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to a ton of music while prepping this fic but there are songs which pretty obviously soundtrack most scenes. For chapter one, Timmy's cage appearance is set to "Send Me An Angel" by Real Life, and the Tunnel club scene is set to Underworld's "Born Slippy", if you'd like musical accompaniment.

Who knew desperation had a smell?

 

Apparently that smell is the Limelight, at half past two, when Armie didn’t even want to come out tonight but owed Nick a favor. The high ceilings of the former church building do nothing to diffuse the smell of sweat, alcohol, and the hot-leather tang of cocaine in the air. This isn’t Armie’s scene at all; he likes a drink but he favors hotel bars, speakeasies in former libraries, places where the leather is on the chairs, not the clientele. Last week, though, after the exchange had closed and they’d walked next door to their favorite martini bar, Nick had started teasing him about how he “probably couldn’t even handle the downtown crowd, a club kid would look at you the wrong way and you’d slink home in a ball of sexual confusion”, and Armie couldn’t let a comment like that pass unaddressed.

 

_“You really go out and party with those kids, Nick?”_

_“Well, on the weekends. Not when we’ve gotta be on the floor at eight the next morning, Armie, even I can’t swing that on the regular, but on a Friday night? Sure, Tunnel, the Limelight. They’re fun. And the drugs are cheaper because people don’t know we make Wall Street money. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”_

 

Armie sighed, nodded, even agreed to let Nick dress him since he figured none of these club kid costume shops would carry something his size. When Nick had showed up that evening carrying red snakeskin pants that somehow fit Armie perfectly, painted his chest and arms white, and made some kind of “shirt” by wrapping a rope around Armie’s limbs and torso with suspicious confidence...well, Armie had to roll with it. Nick was dressed as some sort of futuristic cop in a reflective gold jumpsuit and black patent leather boots, and he’d disappeared almost as soon as they walked in the door, leaving Armie to nurse so many rum and cokes he’d lost count.

 

Speaking of which, his drink seems awfully...empty. At this point Armie can find his way to the bar by muscle memory alone, and when he slides a twenty across the bar and refuses change, the bartender adds two extra shots to his glass. And Armie needs them since as soon as he turns back to find his favorite spot on the wall to lean against, he bumps straight into a tangle of brown curls the same color as his drink, and would have spilled rum all over his shirt if he’d been wearing one.

 

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry,” Armie screams, still not sure if the kid hears him over the throbbing bass of the music.

 

The mop of curls leans close to Armie’s ear to make sure Armie can hear him. “No worries,” it says, and when the curls pull away Armie is met with a gaze as sharp and glassy as emeralds. When those green eyes meet Armie’s, they soften, warm, a gemstone melting into a puddle. “It was totally my fault. Here, let me make it up to you,” and the kid reaches into the pocket of his sequined silver pants. _Dear god, those pants are so tight, how is there room for a pocket?_ Armie surprises himself with this train of thought but seems unable to stop it. _How did I just now notice he’s not wearing a shirt either?_ The kid pulls a vial from his pocket and taps it twice to deposit a bump on the spot between his thumb and forefinger.

 

 _Well, if that’s cocaine I know what I’m in for. I should probably make sure that’s what it is, though. I’m woefully unqualified to trip on ketamine or something right now. I’ve got work again...eventually. I don’t even know this guy’s name._ Those are the thoughts that _should_ go through Armie’s head when he sees the white line glowing under the blacklights of the club. Instead what he thinks is, _that’s the most beautiful hand I’ve ever seen, and if this is the price I pay to touch it so be it_ , and he bends his head, grabs the guy’s hand under the pretense of steadying it, and sniffs the bump in one go.

 

 _Whew, it’s coke_ , Armie thinks as soon as his sinuses go numb. When a clean alertness rips through him seconds later he offers a brief prayer of thanks. _Good coke, too_. “Hey, thanks, you didn’t have to,” he starts to yell toward the gorgeous tangle of limbs and hair, but the guy’s already gone.

 

The coke makes Armie’s next drink go down considerably faster and even motivates him to move from the wall into the middle of the dance floor, where some of the boys in go-go cages lick and bite at their lips at the sight of the pale silent giant drifting through the crowd. Someone totters past in nine-inch platforms and absently drags a bright red lipstick across Armie’s mouth. He idly thinks it must look like a gash. He’s just hit the sweet spot of the upswing of the coke and the downswing of the booze, and raised his arms to dance, when the song changes and all the lights go dark except a single spotlight on the go-go cage nearest him. It appears empty as a sinuous beat begins.

 

_Do you believe in heaven above? Do you believe in love?_

 

Right on cue the false floor of the cage falls away as a platform rises through it. Huddled on the platform is a mess of curls that Armie has seen for nine and a half seconds of his life yet knows he’ll be able to draw from memory until he dies. The chestnut-haired boy is crouched, head down, arms encircling his legs, the silver sequins throwing constellations into the club beyond.

 

In that moment, Armie very much and very suddenly believes.

 

The beat drops for a moment, then kicks in again, and as the song begs _send me an angel_ the boy delivers. He unfurls in a single motion, still shirtless but with tiny, delicate silver wings painted in filigree on his back. His is the body all classical sculptors were aiming to recreate, and when Armie sees it in the flesh he knows they all failed. The boy throws himself against the bars of the cage like he means to destroy them, caresses them like he means to love them, catches Armie’s eye and runs his tongue, catlike, along his thumb and forefinger so that he’s licking every place Armie had just touched. His eyes are lined, heavily, and Armie thinks he’s wearing lipstick too until he realizes that in his enthusiasm for dancing the kid has bitten one corner of his lip and smeared that side of his mouth with blood. It doesn’t seem to matter. Armie’s mesmerized, watching as the dancer climbs and shimmies and hangs upside down for a moment among the bars like a crucifixion in reverse. Which this very well might be.

 

The song winds down and the dancer is moving lower in the cage, the false floor sinking beneath him. He clings to the bars, looking skyward in mock fear as he descends, and before Armie can even think he steps up to the cage, wraps both his hands around the dancer’s as he disappears. Just before the false floor closes over him the boy surges up, presses his bloodied lips to Armie’s cheek. Armie wishes he could have it inked there forever. “I’m Timothée,” the boy whispers in Armie’s ear, and then the club lights go dark.

 

When they come back up again a moment later, the cage is empty.

 

 _Next week_ , Armie tells himself. _I’ll come back_ **_one_ ** _time, just one, to see if the kid is here again. It’s not crazy to come looking for someone that special, once, to prove it wasn’t a dream._

 

*****

 

Armie’s been at the clubs every Friday and Saturday night for the past five weeks. No sign of Timothée. Nick was suspicious of Armie’s sudden enthusiasm until he remembered the way Armie had stayed silent the rest of the night after meeting Timothée, held his hand against the print of Timothée’s lips on his cheek, the way even days later Armie’s hand would drift there unaware, reaching for something as fleeting as a bass line, as a high. After he remembered all that Nick never asked any more questions.

 

Tunnel is suspiciously empty on this Saturday; Armie suspects it’s the cold weather that’s just started lending a bite to the air. He likes this club better than most since one level looks like a Victorian library, and Armie can stand there with his back to the rest of the club and pretend he’s found Timothée and brought him to one of the bars Armie actually likes, with stronger drinks, less cocaine, and slinky music instead of a bass line disguised as a song like...whatever this track is that’s playing. This repetitive, indistinguishable nonsense that Armie only dances to because he’s got a mission. He’s definitely not tapping his foot to the beat while he waits for a drink. That’s just so he’ll fit in, not stand out as such a square, although since Nick started dressing him for these clubs that doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem. Armie didn’t even know you could cover a speedo in peacock feathers, but wearing it seems to mean Armie doesn’t have to pay a cover charge, so he’s not complaining.

 

He leans against the railing, surveying the other layers of the cavernous space while the throbbing music insists _dirty numb angel boy...she was a beautiful boy…._ Armie thinks _yep, that’s what I’m looking for_ but has almost given up for the night and gone looking for Nick when a red spotlight sweeps over a corner of the first floor and lights a familiar head of curls ablaze. _Timothée._ He’s exactly as clothed this time as he was unclothed the last, in a forest green bodysuit patterned in reptile scales. _The same color as his eyes,_ Armie thinks, and doesn’t ask himself how he remembers after five weeks a pair of eyes he saw for ten seconds. Timothée is behind a barrier again, this time a low wall mimicking a stage, since his arms are attached to the ceiling with puppet strings. He’s hanging loosely from them, head bowed; Armie’s stare makes him raise his head just as the bass kicks in. One side of Timothée’s mouth curls up in a crooked grin; Armie blinks and suddenly he’s across the room, and if you asked him how he got there all he could say is _those eyes._ The song says _let your feelings slip boy but never your mask boy_ and Timothée yanks his arms down, breaking the strings, to throw them around Armie and bring their lips together in a proper kiss this time, and Armie can only return the touch, his arms encircling Timothée almost twice, _oh fuck, his bodysuit doesn’t have a back_ and there’s skin and sweat and the club lights drop, and then there’s just Timothée’s mouth, and taste, and smell, and Armie surrenders.

 

When the lights come up again a moment later and the beat of the song has become hard and driving, Timothée slides one hand down Armie’s side until he’s cupping Armie’s rapidly hardening cock, and with his other hand points toward the bar, raises onto his tiptoes to bellow in Armie’s ear over the music, “I’m getting a drink!” Armie answers him by grabbing a fistful of Timothée’s curls in his hand, pressing another kiss to his lips just because he _can_ now, he’s found him, and when they break apart Armie nods assent into Timothée’s dazed eyes. Watching him move across the room, the bodysuit so tight Armie can see muscle moving beneath it, and realizing he can touch Timothée now, there’s no more dreaming left to do because they’re _here_ , is almost too much. Armie zones out a bit watching Timothée make his way back across the room, the way the lights play on his hair, he hadn’t even realized till now that Timothée’s curls are covered in silver glitter, and people keep grabbing Timothée, kissing him hello, sliding their hands along the patterned velvet, and Armie feels...yes, _pride_ , it takes him a moment to identify it because it’s been so long, but he is. He’s proud that a man that so many clearly love has chosen him, by all indicators has been waiting and looking for Armie just the way Armie has been waiting and looking for him. Someone wearing a pair of giant feathered wings offers a small vial to Timothée and Armie sees him inhale sharply, rubbing at his nose, and then he’s _there_ , Timothée is at his side, bumping a velvet-covered hip against Armie’s and snickering into his cup of rum and coke.

 

“I guess I didn’t need this coke, someone gave me the better kind,” Timothée jokes into Armie’s ear, standing on tiptoes again so that Armie makes a pretense of encircling Timothée’s waist with his arm to keep him in earshot. Really, though, he just likes the feeling of it, of holding them together so they never again spin apart into opposite corners of the Manhattan night.

 

“I’ll take it, then,” Armie jokes, reaching for the drink and being sure to place his mouth on the same part of the glass Timothée had just been drinking from. When Timothée looks up to meet Armie’s eyes he expects the sparkling forest pool he’s started to get alarmingly used to, but when Timothée’s gaze is clouded and his brow furrows, Armie’s stomach starts to sink. When Timothée leans away from Armie, against the nearest wall, and folds his hands at the small of his back as if making sure that the wall won’t leave when he’s not looking, Armie’s suspicions are confirmed. He’s seen it happen often enough over his past few weeks scouring the clubs, and that it’s happening _now_ , just when he’d finally found what he’d been scouring the clubs for, seems colossally unfair. But he’ll deal with that later. Right now he wants to care for Timothée, wants in with a vehemence that is, frankly, surprising.

 

“So that wasn’t--” he begins, leaning in to Timothée’s ear and trying to ignore how his hair smells of clean cotton and tickles Armie’s nose with every syllable.

  
“It’s K, not coke,” Timothée sighs into Armie’s ear. “It’s fine, it’s not like I haven’t done it before, but I just wouldn’t do it _here_ , get me? I’d rather--” and he looks up at Armie with a gaze that’s suddenly so sharp for a moment that Armie would swear it was _calculated_. “I’d normally do this at home, where I can chill and not have to be near anybody I don’t trust. Would you--can you walk me home?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	2. Morning May Come Without Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Armie knows he could go to sleep, definitely should go to sleep if he ever hopes to be a functional adult again, but something in him fears that if he closes his eyes he’ll open them and be back in his Dakota apartment, high above the streets and alone. He stays awake for probably an hour, memorizing every curve of Timmy against him, in case this night has to last him for the rest of his life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to be overly generous with the tags; there's not much somnophilia here as they are both awake pretty soon after things start, and the minor injuries are literally scratches. Still, wanted to make sure I covered the bases. Enjoy the sexy times; next chapter it's gonna get dark!
> 
> The title of this chapter might be a little bit of a surprise; it comes from "You and The Night and The Music." For my money, Julie London is the best chillout music ever made, so I gave her to Timmy here.

Timothée’s apartment isn’t far; they skirt the Hudson Yards and end up on a nondescript block of 30th Street. Timothée perks up as soon as the outside air hits him; although he’s silent on the walk he presses into Armie’s side, gently guiding them at intersections. Armie tells himself that he keeps an arm around Timothée’s shoulder for safety, definitely not because his arm seems to fit there like a tumbler in a lock and proves just as hard to remove. When they arrive at Timothée’s building, instead of going up the winding staircase from the lobby Timothée ducks into an almost invisible doorway off to one side and starts _down_ the staircase within. Armie has to bend almost double to follow him. The staircase is unlit and Armie feels his way ahead slowly, hands on the walls. He hears a light switch flip ahead of him and is puzzled when the stairs don’t grow any lighter. When he reaches the bottom he sees why: a strip of blacklights along the baseboards of the room lights up a series of geometric figures painted on the wall, but doesn’t make it any easier for Armie to discern what’s in the unfamiliar murk of Timothée’s basement apartment.

 

“These look like Keith Haring,” Armie remarks, to kill the time while his eyes adjust.

 

“That’s because they are.” Timothée’s voice comes from a corner to Armie’s right, and if he squints he can see a small loveseat with Timothée nestled on it beneath an enormous knit blanket. “He was--he was a really good friend. He did those all in one night. Close to the end.” He’s shifting around under the blanket at seismic speed, and when a hand darts out and drops the green bodysuit on the floor it hits Armie: _he’s naked under there. If you were ever telling yourself this was something friendly, polite, you should probably go now._

 

Friendly and polite have never been Armie’s brand. He settles at the other end of the loveseat and taps his thighs for Timothée to stretch his legs out. “Better now?” he asks, rubbing idly at one of the bare feet suddenly in his lap.

 

“Yeah, god, much better. Although, you don’t have to do--” Timothée gestures to his feet, “--that. It feels great, but I’m really just glad for the company.”

 

“Hey, I’ve had your tongue in my mouth already, this seems like the least I could do.”

Armie’s eyes have adjusted to the dim basement lighting now, and he can make out a mattress on a low platform in the opposite corner. As he presses his thumb into the soft arch of Timothée’s foot he hears a low chuckle.

 

“Did you want to move things...there?” Timothée’s head is resting on the back of the loveseat but he inclines it toward the bed, keeping his eyes closed.

 

“Oh no, I didn’t think--” It was exactly what Armie had thought, briefly, when he realized that they were functionally in Timothée’s bedroom, one of them already naked, but he’d put it firmly aside in favor of making sure Timothée was safe and happy.

 

“That’s good, because I didn’t mean.” Timothée’s voice, already low with a constant laugh bubbling beneath, has become even lazier in his intoxication. The final syllable seems to linger forever in the air, and just when Armie begins to speak again Timothée picks up, “I’m not _that_ high, but I’m too high to fuck someone as hot as you for the first time. I’d want to remember details. You got me home and I appreciate that, and you’re being a certain kind of nice to me and I that appreciate even more. I’ll show you how much more. Some other time. For now I’m gonna put on some music, lie in bed, watch the ceiling.” Timothée reaches down, flips a switch, and a tiny constellation of white pinpoints of light twirls above them. “You can join me if you like. Or you can come back to Tunnel next week, I’ll be there again. You walked me home, you don’t have to babysit me all night. I appreciate it either way.”

 

Armie expects Timothée to stay wrapped in the blanket as he crosses the room to the bed; he doesn’t expect that once he’s there he’ll drop the blanket completely to spread it out on the mattress. Armie is confronted with much more white skin, glowing a fragile violet under the blacklight, than he was prepared to handle, and so when Timothée stretches out on the blanket, one long leg hanging onto the floor, and tucks a slim bicep behind his ear Armie is woefully unprepared for the question, “so, did you want to stay?”

 

“T-” Armie begins to say, and finds his voice has stopped working. “T-Timothée, I--yeah. Yes, I would like that. I like you. I like your company.” And even though averting his eyes from Timothée’s suddenly visible cock is the most difficult thing he’s done all year, he does mean it.

 

“Well then,” Timothée murmurs, sliding half of the blanket up to his torso to mercifully relieve some of Armie’s tension, “if you’re going to stay the night, please call me Timmy.”

 

*****

 

They don’t even kiss, not that night, not at first. Armie leaves his boots neatly by the door and sits on the edge of the bed fully clothed. “Should I?” he asks, gesturing to his outfit and then to Timmy, distractingly _unclothed_ beneath just the single layer of knit blanket between them.

 

“I asked you to stay because I wanted _you_ ,” Timmy replies, pulling the blanket up to his chin. “Whatever _you’re_ comfortable in, Armie,” and when Timmy says his name, low, furry with intoxication but firm with trust, it bypasses Armie’s brain completely. It’s as if he blinks and his pants, his sequins, his mesh, are folded neatly at the foot of the bed and he’s sliding one leg into the bed beside Timmy, oddly shy at the open appraisal in Timmy’s hooded gaze.

 

“Hey, before you get too comfortable, would you--” and Timmy gestures to a record player beside the bed on Armie’s side. “Just...play whatever’s there. I’m sure it will be fine.”

 

Whatever Armie expects will come pouring from the sound system, it definitely isn’t Julie London, but that’s exactly what starts when the needle drops. And Timmy seems to like it, as he sighs peacefully and folds both arms behind his head, watching the still-whirling stars on the ceiling above them. In the gently glowing darkness it feels like their own planet. Armie shivers a bit as his body starts to warm under the blanket, and he’s careful not to nudge Timmy since he’s not sure how much contact Timmy wants in his present mental state. At Armie’s movement, Timmy reaches over to cover Armie’s leg with his own.

 

“Comfortable?” he asks, his voice still cinder-warm from the high and the alcohol earlier on.

 

“You have no idea.” Armie doesn’t mean to say it aloud, doesn’t even know he’s thought it, but also has the feeling he’s not the one deciding these things anymore.

 

Timmy chuckles, rolls onto his side, and throws an arm across Armie’s chest. Those curls, softer than in Armie’s weeks’ worth of dreams about them, are suddenly on his shoulder, Timmy’s entire length pressed against him, and it’s both the hottest thing Armie can remember and somehow beyond sex at all. “Tell me about you,” Timmy requests, fingers drumming idly against Armie’s chest. “It can be my bedtime story.”

 

“Oh, it’ll put you to sleep, that’s for sure. I’m probably the least exciting person someone like you has ever met,” Armie chuckles.

 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Timmy says, sleepy but firm, and his refusal to let Armie put himself down makes a warmth bloom in parts of Armie’s chest he’d thought went cold long ago.

 

“Well, I work on Wall Street. I finally moved off the floor, but barely, now I oversee a few other guys, but it’s loud and the hours are long. I’d like something slower paced, but I sort of lucked into this and a lot of people would kill to be where I am. So I wanna stick with it long enough to find out why.”

 

“The money, is my guess.”

 

Armie snorts. “You’re probably right about that. I grew up in the Cayman Islands so New York was kind of a shock, but once my parents moved to the States I knew this was the only city for me. I’ve always wanted to be at the center of things, you know?”

 

A soft chuckle from Armie’s shoulder. The curls brush his jaw, leaving a kiss of glitter. “You’ve seen what I do for those clubs. Do you think I know about wanting to be the center of attention?”

 

“Point taken. Yeah, I guess you do. But once I got here, I realized what I really want isn’t to be where everyone’s looking. It’s to be the center of one person’s world, not everyone’s. I’ve--I’ve tried everything people tell you to do to meet people. Personal ads, blind dates, having my friend Nick pick out people for me. And none of it felt right until I saw you, in that club that I had no business being at in the first place.”

 

“Sure you did,” Timmy mutters against Armie’s shoulder. He’s drifting, and Armie has to lean in to catch his next words even in the small silent room. “You had to come there for us to find each other.”

 

The next sounds from Timmy are soft snores, high-pitched and even. Armie knows he could go to sleep, definitely _should_ go to sleep if he ever hopes to be a functional adult again, but something in him fears that if he closes his eyes he’ll open them and be back in his Dakota apartment, high above the streets and _alone_. He stays awake for probably an hour, memorizing every curve of Timmy against him, in case this night has to last him for the rest of his life. Somewhere to his left the Julie London record warns, “after the night and the music die, will I have you?” Then he, too, drifts off.

 

He awakens to Timmy’s mouth on his cock.

 

The sensation comes before his eyes are even open, not that opening them in the blacklit room makes matters all that much clearer. But he can see the glossy tangle of Timmy’s morning curls working between his legs, feel the plush warmth of his mouth, and when Armie goes to move his limbs he finds that Timmy has wrapped one arm around his hip, winding up to the small of his back, and his other hand clasps Armie’s, fingers entwined atop the knit blanket that they’re suddenly both too warm to need.

 

Armie hopes Timmy doesn’t take it personally that his cock is still sluggish and half-soft from sleep, but when Timmy looks up from beneath his own sleep-swollen eyelids and meets Armie’s gaze, he’s hard Timmy snickers around him. It tickles a little, makes Armie squirm, and Timmy pulls off, flicking the head with his tongue, and replaces his mouth with a loose fist, stroking Armie lazily while his mouth wanders up Armie’s torso scattering open-mouthed kisses and tiny playful bites. When Timmy’s mouth reaches Armie’s neck he pulls away, just _breathes_ against Armie’s collarbone, and then nestles his head back against Armie’s shoulder.

 

“Good morning to me,” Armie chuckles, surprised to find his voice still works.

 

“That was just the appetizer,” Timmy murmurs in his morning voice, now clearer and more sober than last night, but thick with sleep and (Armie likes to think) the sensation of Armie’s cock in his throat. He nuzzles his thick curls under Armie’s chin; they don’t tickle as much as Armie expects, but feel light and strong as silk. Armie turns his head for a kiss and finds Timmy must have been thinking the same thing because their mouths meet before he expects it, the first time when both of them are sober, and somehow Timmy’s even more pliant now, tipping his head back at the first touch of Armie’s tongue, until its explorations have even mapped the backside of Timmy’s crooked canine tooth, tilted so finely that you’d never notice unless you were trying to map Timmy’s face to dream about for the rest of your life. Armie had noticed.

 

When Armie grows more insistent, draws a fist up into Timmy’s curls, the hand that has been softly curled around Armie’s cock comes to life too, the caresses now purposeful, and when Timmy’s warm grip vanishes Armie opens his eyes to cry out, then sees Timmy reaching into a nightstand drawer, pulling out a tiny bottle, holding it between his elegant hands to warm it. Timmy drizzles the lube into his palm, swipes a couple of fingers through it, and when Armie moves to help Timmy straddles him, throws one leg across his waist lightning fast, and Armie’s pinned before he can fully realize he wanted to move. “Uh-uh,” Timmy singsongs, shaking his head and biting his lower lip. “All I’ve been thinking about for the past month is feeling you under me when you come. Just...let me?”

 

While he’s been talking, Timmy has reached behind himself, two fingers sliding in and out with slowly increasing speed, and at the end of his sentence he rises onto his knees over Armie, sinks back onto his fingers and Armie’s cock pulses toward Timmy so strongly that he’d probably be embarrassed by it if all his brainpower wasn’t currently in his dick. “Fuck, Timmy, _yes, please_.”

 

Timmy smiles, a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth but Armie sees it, as Timmy tears open a condom, slips it onto Armie’s dick in a single motion, slides his lubed palm up and down a couple of times, quick, perfunctory. Armie couldn’t even tell you if he’s wet enough but Timmy releases him, hovers over him again, muscles visible through his porcelain skin, and then starts to sink down for seconds that feel like years, his muscles enveloping Armie an inch at a time, and all Armie can think is it’s not fair that only this part of him will ever know this all-encompassing warmth. When Timmy sinks down all the way with Armie fully inside him he rocks back and forth a couple of times, moving Armie’s cock inside him as he goes, throwing his head back for a moment with eyes closed before bending forward slowly so their hips are fully touching. “God, you feel as good as I’d dreamed,” Timmy hisses. “Wait, have you...have you even done this before?” He draws a shuddering breath while waiting for Armie’s answer and the slight quiver Armie feels around his cock nearly makes him come on the spot.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I have. Touched by your concern, though.” Armie cracks his own half-smile and is rewarded by a sloppy, lopsided kiss that ends up hitting mostly his cheek.

 

“Never can tell with you Wall Street hotshots. Some of you are just...day traders, you know?” As if to reward Armie for being experienced, Timmy flexes experimentally around Armie’s dick and moves his hips in a slow circle.

 

“Oh--fuck, if you do that again I’m going to come,” Armie pants, grabbing Timmy’s thighs and finding himself inconveniently even more aroused that his hands can encircle each one almost whole.

 

“Well, we have both been waiting for this a while,” Timmy purrs, and does it again. His long fingers dig in below Armie’s ribs to brace himself as he lifts himself almost fully off of Armie and then slams back down again, so hard and quick it takes Armie’s breath away, but then Timmy keeps Armie fully seated inside him, makes tiny motions back and forth, and then leans forward again to kiss Armie fully, assertively, his tongue doing the exploring this time.

 

“Close,” Armie pants against Timmy’s mouth, and when Timmy sighs _touch me_ Armie does, feeling Timmy’s dick pulse in his palm, _that’s his heartbeat, his life_ and at that thought Armie bucks upward, feeling Timmy clench around him as they come together, Armie guiding Timmy’s release onto his chest with firm strokes. When Timmy pulls off and lies against his chest without even washing off first Armie chuckles and kisses the top of his head before falling into a half-sleep.

 

He won’t notice until the next day that anywhere Timmy gripped during their night together is now marked with a half-moon of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	3. Thousand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armie squeezes his eyes shut, draws a deep breath, hopes that when he opens them he’ll be back in Timmy’s basement, limbs entangled in sweaty sheets, so he can take them a thousand miles away at that moment and stop everything that’s happening now from crashing down on their heads. But he opens his eyes, and Timmy’s still there, staring at him, and worse, staring at him like he has _answers_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one and only song in this chapter is Moby's "Thousand", which at 1000 bpm is the Guinness World Record holder for highest bpm.
> 
> A "happy ending" is always tricky for a story like this, but I wanted them to have one. Thank you for taking this journey with me and these two slippery shiny club boys who wouldn't get out of my head.

_Come back to Tunnel next week, I’ll be there again_.

 

Armie has to keep chanting this to himself under his breath to ward off Nick’s probing looks. “You want to what? You ran off with the hottest kid in the club last weekend yet you’re back for more? Leave some for me, won’t you, I can’t get dudes to even talk to me if you’re in the room.”

Armie just laughs, elbows Nick in the ribs. It dislodges a ribbon of the crime scene tape that’s wrapped around Nick’s torso instead of a shirt. Nick shoots Armie a dirty look, rearranging the tape over the waistband of a floor-length skirt covered in silver sequins that they’d picked up at a Goodwill for three dollars.

As soon as they’re through the door Armie takes advantage of his height to scan the room for the familiar glimmer of Timmy’s curls. This time he has the memory of their lightness under his hands, the way they smelled of sweat and a spice Armie couldn’t place. The feel of them pressing insistently under his chin, Timmy begging wordlessly for a farewell blow job before Armie left him half-asleep in his basement apartment. “Friday,” he’d whispered, nose in Timmy’s curls, hands roaming everywhere to memorize as he said goodbye. Timmy had muttered some sort of assent, rolled over, gone back to sleep although it was three in the afternoon.

Now, as Armie scans the club and doesn’t find the one thing he’s come here to see, he can’t help wondering if he misinterpreted the murmuring. Maybe Timmy had been saying no, or trying not to say anything so as not to hurt Armie’s feelings. There were a ton of clubs. A ton of music. Apparently even a ton of Wall Street pretty boys, which is what Armie was starting to feel like, who wanted to take Timmy home. Maybe right now Timmy was at Palladium, choosing one, offering his elegant hand in introduction, in invitation, in offering.

But there had been Timmy’s giggle in the dark, his attentive breaths as he listened to Armie talk about himself, the catch in his voice when he’d said _you had to come there for us to find each other_. Armie can’t believe these were lies. “Nick,” Armie yells in the direction of his right shoulder, and finds Nick still beside him, scanning the crowd but for different reasons. “He’s not here, I’m gonna go check on him.” 

“Should I come?” Nick asks, the concern on his face marking how rare this attachment is for Armie.

“Nah, enjoy your night. You can finally prowl without me.” Armie winks, inclines his head toward the packed dance floor, and Nick smiles, satisfied, as he descends into the crowd.

 

Retracing his steps to Timmy’s house without Timmy by his side feels haunted, surreal. In the mind-numbing din of the club it had felt easy to make excuses for Timmy’s absence, but the closer he gets to Timmy’s building the harder it becomes for Armie to hide the sinking feeling in his stomach. He lets himself into the lobby and hears thumping music from the door to Timmy’s basement room. The flood of relief he feels surprises even him.

As he descends the stairs he can hear the bass of the music rattling the door itself in its frame. “Timmy?” he calls, knowing there’s probably no possible way Timmy could hear him. He raises his hand, bangs at the door once.

When it swings open on its own, Armie’s stomach sinks all over again.

The room is completely dark although the music is still playing, as if someone left in too much of a hurry to be thorough. Armie feels along the wall for a switch, and when the one he hits floods the room in blinding white light he blinks at the shock. It feels unsettlingly like one of those police interrogation scenes in a film, although he’s alone. The neon figures meant to be seen under blacklight show up as faded ghosts of themselves, mocking Armie with the memory of the last time he was in this room, under their gaze, in Timmy’s embrace. It takes Armie longer than it should to realize the record that’s playing is skipping. The song is empty, pounding, like a dark thought that worms in and removes everything else in your mind. When Armie lifts the needle on the record he can finally think again, although as he looks around Timmy’s small shabby room, seeing everything now that he couldn’t see when the lights were low, he almost wishes he could give the ability back, bury his brain under a thousand beats per minute. There are worn spots along the furniture where Timmy clearly picks at things while high, or maybe just while very, very worried about something. The walls are dark gray cinder blocks; Armie tries to pretend the chips in them aren’t big enough to be scars from things thrown in anger, or even worse, in love. When Armie glances into the tiny corner closet and notices some hangers on the floor, a few missing items that he knows are Timmy’s favorites, the hesitant lump in his gut settles in, develops its own gravity.

Armie turns on the tap in Timmy’s tiny bathroom, splashes water on his face. He has to be careful; he’s so outsized in the cramped space that full use of his elbows would probably shatter a mirror or knock down the shower curtain. When he’d spent the night here with Timmy, Timmy had lit candles in the bathroom for them to see by, a strange throwback romanticism that Armie had found charming. Now it seems practical, since it prevented Armie from seeing a scuffed, cracked metal mirror and years of graffiti from previous tenants that had been whitewashed over, mostly ineffectively. By the corner of the mirror Armie can see a bright red heart buried under two layers of thin paint, and he briefly thinks _I hope whoever drew that, way back when, has been better at finding love than I am_.

Then he squints at the heart again, because there’s faint writing in the center that most definitely hasn’t been painted over before.

 

 _A, if you see this, please._ _  
_ _212-695-4682._

_I’m alone._

_T_

 

Suddenly Armie’s spine is made of ice. He tries to suppress his glee at the simple fact that Timmy is _alive_ , and instead has to accept his suspicion that something was probably very, very wrong. The hasty exit, the missing clothes, the message that Armie would find only if he came looking, only if he turned on lights he wasn’t supposed to know existed. The phone number was written in pencil. Armie memorizes it, then smudges it with his finger beyond recognition before he leaves.

 _That number is the last number in the world you should call,_ Armie thinks to himself as he dials that number from the pay phone on the nearest street corner.

“H-hello? Armie?” Timmy’s voice sounds like he’s on a distant star.

“Timmy, thank fucking god. What--where are you? Are you all right?” Armie’s pretty sure he gets the right amount of concern into his voice. But he’s masking the unexpected warmth, the sheer happiness he felt hearing Timmy say his name, and say it like he knew Armie could save him. Before that moment it wasn’t even something Armie had known he wanted to do, but now he knows he would burn New York City to the ground to see Timmy come out of this safely.

“The owner of Tunnel is letting me stay at his apartment. He’s out of town. He thinks I just pissed off a dealer but--god, I really can’t talk about it now. Will you--will you come get me?”

“Of course, baby, just tell me where you are.”

Timmy gives Armie an address on the upper west side and whispers, “hurry.” Armie’s hailing a cab with his free hand before he’s even hung up the phone.

Timmy buzzes Armie upstairs; in another world, another life, Armie might have paused to admire the tasteful building decorations and expensive marble. In this lifetime, he can think only of Timmy. When he knocks on the door of the unit number Timmy gave him, he’s too far gone to see that there’s a doorbell he’s ignoring. When Timmy opens the door and falls into Armie’s embrace, Armie’s just so happy he’s _there_ , that he can bury his nose in Timmy’s curls again and wrap Timmy in his waxed denim overcoat, that it takes him far longer than it should to notice that Timmy’s curls are unwashed, uncombed. Timmy’s body trembles inside Armie’s overcoat even after they both take a long breath in each other’s arms, and it’s then Armie realizes Timmy may not just be excited to see him.

“Timmy, Tim, _baby_.” Armie lifts Timmy’s chin with his finger, tips Timmy’s face up until their eyes meet. Timmy’s gaze is scared, guilty, and something Armie never wanted to see again. Definitely not on Timmy. The only place he’s seen that undercurrent is in the most ruthless traders he works with, the kids who get promoted over Armie’s head in a matter of weeks because they’ll sell the same stock twice or trade with a teachers’ pension fund after hours, just hoping they make enough profit to replace the money the next day. They’re people who want to seem caring, but only because it will get them something in return.

Armie hopes against hope that he’s misinterpreting Timmy’s gaze, that this is just a message in a bottle he's held to the light the wrong way. If he just flips it around, this will all make sense. It will be okay. “Please, Tim, tell me what’s going on,” Armie pleads.

Timmy leads him to the couch, next to a giant picture window overlooking Manhattan that Armie yet again feels incapable of properly appreciating. “Armie, I. Fuck.” Timmy exhales loudly. He’s in mismatched sweats, circles under his eyes, chewing his lower lip constantly. Anyone else would look like shit, Armie thinks. Somehow Timmy is still beautiful.

“I killed someone.”

That picture window suddenly feels like a broken airlock. The room has been drained of oxygen.

Armie definitely doesn’t need to be thinking that Timmy is _still_ beautiful.

“What-what the? The fuck, Timmy? What’s going on?”

“That guy? In the club? Gave me the K that night? The night you came home with me?”

These are details Armie can focus on. This is a story. It has a beginning and an end. He clings to that. “Yes. I remember that guy. Big dumb costume wings, knocking everyone in the club in the face.”

At that, Timmy smiles, and the dim evening room is full of light. Armie hopes the light will turn out to be the sunrise, not an atom bomb.

“Yeah, that guy. His name’s Ansel. He--he gave a lot of people that stuff, told them it was Ecstasy. Most people just had a bad night out of it but my friend Saoirse ended up in the hospital. I was fucking pissed, sure, but I just wanted to talk to him about it, I swear. I asked him to come over, I wanted to scare him a little. That’s all. So he’d stop hurting my friends. But then he was late--and I was already high when he got there, and I couldn’t make sense like I wanted to. He started making fun of me, and the fucker _hurt Saoirse_ and...I just wanted to scare him.” Timmy draws a shuddering breath and his hand starts to scrabble nervously at the couch cushions. Armie puts a hand over Timmy’s, just to soothe him, show him that someone’s there, listening, but Timmy flips his hand over and grips Armie’s fingers so tightly he couldn’t let go if he wanted to.  “I wanted to knock him out, show him I meant business, but the hammer was heavier than I thought and--I hit him a couple of times and then he--he _just stopped breathing_. Even then I thought he was gonna get up sometime, I put him in the bathtub, but he just--he never got up again.”

“What--” Armie can’t believe he’s about to say this. It’s the kind of thing people only said in movies, and if it was ever said in real lives it would never be _his_ life. “What did you do with the body?”

Timmy’s grip on his hand loosens. The words that tumbled out of him so frantically a moment ago now seem buried, like speaking them is an excavation. “You gotta know, Armie, I was so high. So high for days. When I realized he wasn’t coming back I did all the drugs he had on him. I didn’t care what I was mixing, half the time I didn’t even know. I might have been trying to take myself out along with him. There’s a whole day when all I remember is watching a single shadow move across the floor. Then--after three days I--I cut him up with kitchen knives from Macy’s. I just did a whole bag of heroin and--I don’t remember much, honestly. I know I--fuck, I put the pieces in a box and threw it into the East River. A cabbie helped me, I gave him a twenty for his trouble but I made sure he couldn’t see my face. And then...I’ve been here ever since. Detoxing. Watching the trees in the park. Praying.” Timmy snaps his head up, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and catches Armie’s eyes to see if a joke seems completely out of line. “And then what do you know. You showed up. Prayer answered. Like that song. When we met, about sending me an angel. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Armie squeezes his eyes shut, draws a deep breath, hopes that when he opens them he’ll be back in Timmy’s basement, limbs entangled in sweaty sheets, so he can take them a thousand miles away at that moment and stop everything that’s happening now from crashing down on their heads. But he opens his eyes, and Timmy’s still there, staring at him, and worse, staring at him like he has _answers_. Armie stands, walks to the window, leans his head against the glass. At this angle there’s nothing holding him back from the world below. Why can’t this be his world, instead of this new one Timmy has dropped him into where there are things to hide and run from and plan for?

He could do it. He could take them to the Caymans, hire Timmy in a made-up position at one of the family companies that keep him on the masthead. Spend evenings drinking blue cocktails, burying their toes in the sand, telling childhood secrets to each other and the palm trees. Except when Timmy talked about thinking Ansel would just get up out of the bathtub, about cutting up the body, about making sure the cabbie didn’t see his face--Armie had gotten the sinking feeling Timmy was trying to sell him a stock he’d already promised to someone else. That was the only other place he’d seen that desperation, eyes darting everywhere, more concerned with whether Armie would give him what he wanted than that he’d just described cutting up a dead body.

But Timmy had been high. The fight was over drugs in the first place and Timmy had needed them to be able to do those horrible things. He’d been in the apartment sweating them out, not going near them again even though he could have scored just by walking downstairs and going two stops on the subway. Maybe that was what Armie had seen in his eyes: the death rattle of that demon leaving Timmy’s body. Leaving it for good, maybe, if he had someone who loved him even when he wasn’t a mercurial pretty boy leaving a trail of glitter in his wake.

Armie doesn’t even hear Timmy’s footsteps behind him; he’s grown that light and silent in his days floating alone over the city. He feels Timmy as a ripple in his consciousness a split second before Timmy’s arms engulf him, as best they can, and when Timmy squeezes Armie in a weak embrace from behind it’s the first time he’s stopped trembling since Armie walked in. _I’ll feed him ten times better than he’s been eating, he’ll put the weight back on in no time_ , Armie’s brain tells him without being asked, and he knows what he’s about to do is redundant but he does it anyway. He turns, searches Timmy’s gaze, and now there’s nothing in it but trust, fear, and something Armie could probably fan into love without much effort. If he chooses to. So he says what he’s known he would say since he dialed that number on the pay phone, what he wishes he could have said days ago to spare them all of this, but angels don’t tell you when they’re going to fall. “Do you have your passport?” he whispers into Timmy’s ear.

 

*****

 

It’s funny. Armie would have sworn Timmy’s eyes were the color of pine trees, but it turns out palm trees were also accurate once you swapped gray New York City sunlight for the island glare that left Timmy blinking as if constantly surprised. It’s been six months now; in New York the spring thaw will be revealing the dirt, grime, trash, and other forgotten secrets that have laid hidden under a blanket of winter. Armie reads the New York Times religiously, more often than he did when he lived there in fact, and so far there’s been no mention of the body, of anyone looking for Ansel, no sign that the scene he was part of has done anything other than roll on, breezily unaware of his absence. He hired Timmy as a bartender at one of the resorts his family owned and was surprised when Timmy took a liking to the job. (“Armie, did you think I had no experience handing people drinks while I’m wearing very little clothing?”) He let Timmy redecorate the place, design new staff uniforms, use his artist’s eye for something calmer than the coked-up haunted houses they’d left behind in New York. Kicking the drugs had taken Timmy the better part of their first month on the island, but one morning after three weeks of shivering and sweats and sickness Armie had awoken to find Timmy already up, sitting in a wicker chair on their screened-in porch, staring at the sea. When he turned to meet Armie’s eyes his gaze was clear like it never had been before, and he’d just said, “Thank you.”

There’s been no sign of the darkness that flashed in Timmy’s eyes the night they left New York for good. Maybe Timmy sweated it out in those weeks of darkness and let the ocean wash it away when he'd lay on the sand at the edge of the water line, letting the waves touch him but not take him. Timmy always did love the edges, but Armie flatters himself that he’s the reason Timmy doesn’t let himself be carried away anymore.

That’s where Timmy is now, in fact, his favorite activity, until the noonday sun gets to be too much for him and he shuffles up the beach to the porch, banging the door behind him as he shakes his sandy curls out of his eyes. There’s a cold pitcher of margaritas on the table, made by Armie not an hour ago, and Timmy pours himself half a glass, drinks it down in one gulp, pretends not to notice Armie noticing the perfect line of his throat, sternum, and flat stomach. Not for the first time Armie thinks _well, if anyone could get away with murder, it would be him._ “Drink?” Timmy asks, arching one eyebrow. “Bringing beautiful people alcohol is my job, after all.” Armie grins, inclines his head toward his empty glass. Timmy saunters over, takes the glass in one hand, and props the other on Armie’s leg to lean in for a long and lingering kiss. He refills the drink, leans across Armie’s lap to set it on the table beside Armie’s chair, and then keeps leaning and leaning until he ends up between Armie’s legs on the floor of the porch, planting chaste kisses on Armie’s stomach. Armie shudders at the delicate sensation, runs his fingers through some of Timmy’s curls, makes a fist in them. Timmy senses his need, unbuttons Armie’s shorts, emits a low giggle when Armie’s cock springs out into his hand already hard. “Ready for me, huh?” Timmy chuckles.

“Always,” Armie sighs, letting his head fall onto the back of the chair. Timmy’s mouth is suddenly around him, warm, familiar, like home. He feels his pulse in his cock push against Timmy’s throat. The waves make a timeless roar that was the first noise he remembers hearing, and will hopefully be the last now that he's here, with Timmy. Timmy’s palms grind sand against Armie’s thighs; it stings, but not like Timmy’s old, tight clenches that used to draw blood. Now he knows Armie’s not going anywhere. The frisson of pain brings Armie close to the edge, and Timmy looks up, mouth still on Armie’s cock, to hold Armie’s gaze while he comes. There’s no darkness in it. Armie has to believe that. Armie closes his eyes, and for the fourth or hundredth or thousandth time since he’s known Timmy, he surrenders.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
